Market data reviewed August 2026.

The short answer

Luxury condo sales in Los Angeles are booming because the wealthiest buyers in this city stopped believing that an estate has to sit on the ground. They're trading gates, gardeners, staff and brutal fire insurance premiums for branded towers with hotel service, resort amenities and the freedom to lock the door and fly out for a month.

The numbers agree. Los Angeles condo sales climbed 22 percent quarter over quarter in Q2, with 760 closings across more than 20 neighborhoods, according to market research reported by The Real Deal. The broad condo market has been soft. The top of it has not. Condos priced at $10 million and above saw median list price per square foot rise 5.2 percent year over year, and they went under contract 54 days faster than the year before, per Realtor.com.

That's not a blip. It's a structural shift, and I've been watching it develop for most of my career.

It's also why Christie's International Real Estate Southern California is launching a Luxury Condo Division, a specialist team built for branded residences, penthouses, vertical estates and towers across the Westside, the Valley and the coast.

I watched this start with the Spellings

For me the origin story of vertical luxury in Los Angeles is Candy Spelling.

In 2011 she sold The Manor in Holmby Hills, the 56,500 square foot, 123 room estate her husband Aaron Spelling built, to Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone for $85 million in cash. At the time it was one of the largest residential trades in the country. Then came the part almost nobody paid attention to. She didn't buy another estate. She moved into a 15,555 square foot penthouse on the top two floors of The Century in Century City, a deal she originally contracted at $47 million and closed at roughly $35 million, as the Los Angeles Times reported.

Back then it read like a curiosity. The ultimate estate owner downsizing into a condo. Looking back it was the starting gun. That purchase set a record at the time of $2,848 per square foot for a Los Angeles condominium, and more importantly it proved a serious eight figure buyer would pick a tower over a lawn.

The Century opened in 2010 and is now widely credited with proving that multimillion dollar condos were viable in this city. It was marketed as the first true vertical estate in Los Angeles. Buyers included Matthew Perry and Rihanna.

Fifteen years later the market Candy Spelling helped create is the fastest moving corner of Los Angeles luxury real estate.

The trophy sales that redrew the ceiling

You can't read the vertical market without knowing the horizontal one it grew out of. Los Angeles has produced a remarkable run of trophy estate trades.

Now look at the condo column. The record for a closed condo sale in the Los Angeles area is $39.2 million, set at The Century in 2025. A two story penthouse at the under construction Aman Beverly Hills, part of the $10 billion One Beverly Hills project, is reportedly reserved at $200 million with a partial deposit down, per The Wall Street Journal and The Real Deal. That's roughly five times the standing record. The residence spans 16,810 square feet indoors plus 14,265 square feet outside, with a private pool and a rooftop terrace.

Read that one more time. A condominium is being priced above every house ever sold in Los Angeles. That's the entire thesis in a single data point.

Other recent benchmarks worth knowing:

• Sierra Towers penthouse at $36 million, 7,400 square feet, reportedly to Canadian heiress Taylor Thomson
• Mandarin Oriental Residences, Beverly Hills, Penthouse 1W at $13,252,500, or $3,852 per square foot, the top condo price per foot in the county at the time it closed
• Rosewood Residences Beverly Hills closings at $14.8 million and $12.35 million, with Penthouse E still offered at $35 million. Rosewood alone accounted for nine of the roughly 20 Los Angeles County condo sales above $10 million in 2025, per the New York Post
• Park Elm at Century Plaza, unit 27A, three bedrooms, $10.7 million in July

Why buyers are leaving estates for towers

Here's the part that matters if you own a big house or you're shopping the top of the market. The reasons are boring and rational, which is exactly why the trend has legs.

The cost of running an estate got out of hand. Fire insurance is the headline. Some luxury homeowners have been paying $50,000 to $100,000 a year for coverage, as Realtor.com reported. Stack staff, gardeners, pool service, security and deferred maintenance on top of that and a monthly HOA of $8,000 to $18,000 starts looking like a discount instead of a burden.

Lock and leave won. Buyers want to travel and they want somebody watching the house while they're gone. No pool service to schedule, no gardener to pay, no fire insurance renewal to dread, and someone at the desk if anything goes wrong at two in the morning. That combination is doing more to move this market than any single price point.

The January 2025 wildfires accelerated everything. Owners displaced into rentals discovered they liked simpler living and never went back. In one case reported by the New York Post, an owner traded a 14 acre Beverly Hills estate for a $14 million condo.

Tax and residency planning. Buyers who now claim Texas or Florida as home want a Los Angeles base for the few months a year they're in town for business, family or fun. They do not want a compound to maintain in absentia.

Security and service. For a lot of these buyers this isn't downsizing at all. It's an upgrade to peace of mind, with staff, controlled access and a service program they could never replicate on a private lot.

Walkability, finally. Century City and downtown Beverly Hills now genuinely deliver walk to dinner living. That is new for this city, and it removes the one objection that used to end every condo conversation in Los Angeles.

Developers rebuilt the product. These aren't apartments anymore. Floor plans were redrawn around double island kitchens, private elevator entry and terraces big enough to host on. At One Beverly Hills, Cain Development's Larry Green put the intent plainly: "We feel like we're developing the equivalent of single family estates, albeit in a high rise structure."

The most extreme amenities in Los Angeles towers

This is the moment these buildings stopped competing with other condos and started competing with estates. All of the following exist in Los Angeles right now.

Ten Thousand on Santa Monica Boulevard has a robot butler, a chauffeured Rolls Royce Phantom for residents, and a 3D full body wellness scanner. There's a treatment room on site for facials, massages and Botox, per the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. Its 75,000 square feet of amenity space includes a private one acre park with a tennis court, a basketball court, a dedicated dog run lawn, a chef's kitchen and an outdoor theater with an 84 foot screen and a fire pit, according to the building's own fact sheet.

The Century sits on four acres of landscaped gardens with a 75 foot pool and cabanas, an Assouline culture lounge, a screening room, private wine storage and a fitness club run by Equinox.

Mandarin Oriental Residences, Beverly Hills devotes 12,000 square feet of rooftop to a 40 foot pool, a residents only spa with steam, sauna and treatment rooms, a Technogym fitness center, a yoga studio, an outdoor meditation terrace and gardens by Swiss landscape designer Enzo Enea. Residents get in home dining from Michelin starred chef Daniel Boulud plus a private restaurant, Boulud Privé.

Rosewood Residences Beverly Hills put swimming pools inside individual condominiums. Nearly half the homes have their own. There's a 50 foot rooftop pool, a jacuzzi, and 21 staff members serving just 17 residences, per Rosewood.

One Beverly Hills wraps its residences in eight acres of botanical gardens with an Aman Spa, a private Aman Club and a 78 room Aman hotel attached. The campus covers 17.5 acres, targets completion before the 2028 Olympics, and offers homes from 2,550 to 25,000 square feet starting at $20 million.

Inside the units, private elevator entry, double island chef's kitchens, service elevators running to dedicated mudrooms, indoor and outdoor fireplaces, wet bars, butler's pantries and wine rooms are all standard in the branded tier.

Cold plunges, sky lounges with breakfast, screening rooms, children's playrooms and dog parks are table stakes now. The real competition has moved to chauffeurs, private clubs, branded restaurants and staff ratios that embarrass most five star hotels.

How each market actually looks

For baseline context, condos across the greater Los Angeles market sold at a median of $685,000 in June with 967 closings and about 29 days on market, per Greater Los Angeles REALTORS analysis of MLS data. Every market below sits above that line, and the branded tier sits far above it.

Beverly Hills

The epicenter of branded residences, and the market where the spread between ordinary and extraordinary is widest. The city's luxury condo threshold, meaning the entry point for the top ten percent of units, sits around $1.63 million, and Los Angeles now ranks third nationally in million dollar condo listings with roughly 1,700 on the market at any time, per the New York Post. The branded tier at Rosewood, Mandarin Oriental, Aman and Maybourne is a different market entirely, trading from $10 million to $45 million with penthouses above that. Rosewood's residence 2F closed at $16.3 million, which works out to $4,000 per square foot.

Worth noting how fast this market moves. Luxury condos here average about 48 days on market against roughly 100 days in Miami and New York.

Century City

The most liquid luxury condo submarket in the city, full stop. Westwood and Century City together led every Los Angeles neighborhood by transaction count in Q2, with 147 sales at an average around $1.5 million and $838 per square foot, per The Real Deal. It also holds the standing closed record at The Century's $39.2 million sale. Between The Century, the twin 44 story Park Elm towers, the Fairmont serviced residences and the Century Plaza retail ecosystem, this is as close to a vertical village as Los Angeles gets.

Culver City

The value door into Westside tower living, and the most misread of these four markets. Culver City condos carry a median listing price near $1.1 million at about $679 per square foot with roughly 167 active listings and 42 days on market, per Realtor.com, while the 90230 pocket runs closer to $692,000. Add the studio expansion, Ivy Station, transit and the downtown Culver dining scene, and you get walkable Westside living at a fraction of Beverly Hills pricing. I expect the amenity bar to climb faster here than anywhere else on this list over the next cycle.

Woodland Hills and Warner Center

The Valley's vertical story is only getting started. The typical Woodland Hills home value runs about $1.17 million and goes pending in roughly 40 days, per Zillow, with hillside and gated tiers well above that and Warner Center condos well below it. The Warner Center 2035 plan is delivering tall, amenity heavy, mixed use buildings. The Q De Soto brought 24 hour concierge, valet, a sky terrace, a resort pool, a spa and an indoor screening room to Woodland Hills, per Connect CRE, and more towers are proposed near the planned Rams Village. Warner Center is on track to become the first real high rise luxury district in the San Fernando Valley.

Calabasas and Hidden Hills, the other half of the equation

Here's the pattern nobody writes about, and it's where I spend a lot of my time.

This boom isn't only about people leaving estates. More and more it's about people owning both.

Calabasas covers enormous range. Typical values run near $1.67 million citywide, while the guard gated pockets climb well past that, with Calabasas Park closer to $2.07 million and the estate tier in communities like The Oaks, Mulholland Estates, Westridge and Mountain View Estates trading into the eight figures, per Zillow neighborhood data. Hidden Hills operates in a tier of its own, with a median around $8.6 million at roughly $1,348 per square foot across 32 listings, per Realtor.com. Five new Hidden Hills estates listed this summer between $16 million and $40 million, working out to $1,500 to $2,000 per square foot, per The Real Deal.

My partner Sarah Anderson does a great deal of her business inside The Oaks, and between the two of us we see both ends of this trade constantly. What we keep seeing is this. A family holds the guard gated Calabasas or Hidden Hills estate for the privacy, the acreage, the horses, the schools and the room to breathe. Then they add a Century City or Beverly Hills branded residence as the city base for business, dinners, the Music Center and easy airport runs, plus the weeks when the estate gets closed up. The condo isn't a replacement. It's the second half of a portfolio.

It runs the other direction too. Empty nesters selling a Hidden Hills compound frequently split the proceeds between a serviced tower and a second home market somewhere else, which keeps the basis working and cuts six figures a year out of their operating cost.

If you own behind the gates in Calabasas or Hidden Hills, the tower market isn't a threat to your value. It's an exit option and a diversification tool, and it's worth understanding before you list.

The Christie's International Real Estate Southern California Luxury Condo Division

Selling a branded residence or a full floor vertical estate is a different job than selling a house. The buyer pool is global. Comparables are building specific, not neighborhood specific. HOA structure, service levels, staff ratios, reserve health, whether insurance is bundled, rental rules, brand licensing and where a unit sits on the floor plate all move value in a real way, and none of that shows up in a standard CMA.

That gap is why Christie's International Real Estate Southern California is launching a Luxury Condo Division, built specifically for this segment:

• Building level valuation intelligence covering stack, exposure, view corridor, floor plate and line, not just neighborhood medians
• Branded residence expertise across Beverly Hills, Century City, the Wilshire Corridor, West Hollywood, downtown and Warner Center
• HOA and carry cost analysis, including what the fee actually buys, so a buyer can compare the true cost of ownership against running an estate
• Global buyer reach through the Christie's network, which is where eight and nine figure condo buyers actually come from
• Transition planning for Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Woodland Hills and gated community sellers weighing a move into serviced living
• New development advisory for developers and sponsors bringing product to market

If you're thinking about buying, selling, or just want to know where you stand, now is the moment to have that conversation, while the top tier is still absorbing faster than the market underneath it.

Frequently asked questions

Are luxury condo sales actually rising in Los Angeles?

Yes. Los Angeles condo sales rose 22 percent quarter over quarter in Q2 with 760 closings, and were up more than 4 percent year over year. Inside the luxury tier, condos priced at $10 million and above saw list price per square foot climb 5.2 percent year over year and went under contract 54 days faster than the prior year, per Realtor.com.

Why are wealthy buyers choosing condos over mansions in Los Angeles?

The main drivers are lock and leave convenience, hotel level service and security, no staffing or maintenance headaches, relief from fire insurance that reached $50,000 to $100,000 a year for some estate owners, real walkability in Century City and Beverly Hills, tax and residency planning by buyers based out of state, and demand that accelerated after the January 2025 wildfires.

What is the most expensive condo ever sold in Los Angeles?

The record for a closed sale is $39.2 million at The Century in Century City. A penthouse at Aman Beverly Hills is reportedly reserved at $200 million, which would beat that by roughly five times and top every house sale in Los Angeles history.

What did Candy Spelling buy after selling The Manor?

She bought a 15,555 square foot penthouse on the top two floors of The Century in Century City, contracted at $47 million and closed at roughly $35 million. It was a record for a Los Angeles condo at the time and an early signal of the move from estates into towers.

What are the most extreme amenities in Los Angeles luxury towers?

Highlights include a robot butler, a chauffeured Rolls Royce Phantom and a 3D body wellness scanner at Ten Thousand, a private one acre park with a tennis court and an 84 foot outdoor theater screen, four acres of gardens and an Assouline culture lounge at The Century, private pools inside individual units at Rosewood Residences, in home dining by Daniel Boulud at Mandarin Oriental Residences, and eight acres of botanical gardens with a private Aman Club at One Beverly Hills.

How much are HOA fees for luxury condos in Los Angeles?

Branded, fully serviced buildings commonly run $8,000 to $18,000 or more per month. Bigger buildings spread costs better. Park Elm at Century Plaza runs about $1.50 per square foot monthly with insurance included.

Are there luxury condos in Woodland Hills or Culver City?

Yes, and both are early in their cycle. Warner Center in Woodland Hills is delivering amenity heavy mixed use towers under the Warner Center 2035 plan, in a market where the typical home value runs about $1.17 million. Culver City condos carry a median listing price near $1.1 million at about $679 per square foot, which buys walkable Westside living well below Beverly Hills pricing.

How does the condo boom affect Calabasas and Hidden Hills homeowners?

Many guard gated owners now pair the estate, where typical Calabasas values run near $1.67 million and Hidden Hills sits around $8.6 million, with a serviced urban residence used as a city base. For most of them the condo supplements the estate rather than replacing it.

The bottom line

Los Angeles spent a century measuring luxury horizontally. Acreage, gates, driveways, lawns. The last fifteen years, starting with one penthouse purchase in Century City, added a second axis. Today the most expensive residence ever traded in this city may well turn out to be a condominium.

If you own an estate in Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Woodland Hills or on the Westside, or you're weighing a purchase in Beverly Hills, Century City or Culver City, the Christie's International Real Estate Southern California Luxury Condo Division was built for this exact decision.

Reach out and let's talk about where you stand.

About the authors

Nathaniel Pitchon-Getzels

Nathaniel Pitchon-Getzels is the founder of Getzels Group, a luxury real estate practice within Christie's International Real Estate Southern California, based out of the firm's Calabasas office. He represents buyers and sellers of high end property across Los Angeles gated and guard gated communities, with work spanning estate sales, branded residences and valuation from the Westside through the west San Fernando Valley. He has spent his career watching the shift from horizontal estates to vertical luxury that this post describes, and called it early. He also hosts a weekly real estate program covering consumer market analysis and writes regularly on Los Angeles pricing, marketing and market trends.

Sarah Anderson

Sarah Anderson does not study The Oaks of Calabasas from the outside. She lives there. As Parter of the Getzels Group within  Christie's International Real Estate Southern California based in Calabasas, she has built her practice inside the gates of her own community, and it shows in the details most agents never pick up on: which floor plans actually live well, which streets hold their value, what a view lot is genuinely worth on a given block. Buyers come to her for a straight read on a community that no listing sheet explains properly. Sellers come to her to position an estate against what is really trading rather than against wishful comps. Together we advise clients on both halves of this market, the estate and the residence, which is increasingly how the top of Los Angeles actually buys.